A Manhattan company’s dream gets quashed by Taylor Swift’s legal team after it mistakenly infiltrates her domain

Cathay Home Inc., a Manhattan-based home goods company, has had to drop its federal trademark application for “Swift Home” after facing opposition from Taylor Swift‘s representatives. The company sells products like decorative pillows, mattresses, sheets, and comforters through major retailers like Target and Nordstrom. The decision came after Swift’s company, TAS Rights Management LLC, filed an opposition at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on February 11.

According to USA Today, the dispute was not just about the word “Swift” appearing on bedding products. Swift’s legal team argued that the cursive “Swift” in Cathay’s proposed logo looked too similar to the singer’s own trademarked signature. Specifically, they pointed to the swooping “S” and the wing-like lines extending from the “t” in the script design.

The central concern in trademark cases like this is consumer confusion, the idea that buyers might think a product is endorsed by the celebrity. Swift already holds more than 175 live trademarks, and that coverage includes bed linens and clothing. So when Cathay applied to register “Swift Home” for their bedding line, they were moving into territory Swift already legally owns.

Taylor Swift’s existing trademark portfolio made this fight one Cathay Home was never going to win

Swift, whose Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, takes her intellectual property seriously. Her dedicated fanbase is equally as passionate – fans have even been spotting clues about her surprise appearances at events. With such a large trademark portfolio, her team is positioned to challenge any brand that could mislead consumers into thinking she endorses a product.

Cathay’s attorney, Ting Geng, was direct about why the company chose not to fight the opposition. Geng stated, “Our client has not used the disputed mark in commerce. After evaluating the circumstances, our client elected not to pursue registration of a mark it did not consider essential to its business.”

There is also an interesting background detail to this story. Geng mentioned that Cathay already had a separate coexistence agreement with Swift over a different “Swift Home” trademark, meaning the two sides had previously found a way to share the name. This new dispute, however, was specifically about the stylized script used in the logo design.

Once Cathay added the signature-like font, the issue shifted from using a common word to something that could be seen as mimicking Swift’s brand identity. Swift has remained a major public figure in recent years, and those close to her have also faced intense scrutiny; her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn recently opened up about his life after the Taylor Swift breakup. That distinction made the current application much harder to defend.

Since Cathay had not yet used the contested mark commercially, their attorney concluded the fight simply was not worth pursuing. The cost and effort of taking on a legal battle of this scale, over a name the company did not consider essential, made walking away the most practical choice.